Elvis Presley showed up at the White House door and asked to be deputized in President Nixon's "War on Drugs." He acted as if on some drug, but was shown into the Oval Office for awkward encounter with Nixon.
Photo: National Archives, Getty Images

Elvis Presley showed up at the White House door and asked to be...

A teenage Barack Obama, with his grandmother Madelyn Payne Dunham, at his graduation from Honolulu's Punahoe High School. He paid a yearbook tribute to Dunham, and to the "Choom Gang" with whom he smoked marijuana.
Photo: / Associated Press

Professor Gizmo, 50, lights up as he waits for I-502 to take effect at the Space Needle on Wednesday, December 5, 2012. Washington State voters approved I-502 on November 6, but the law did not go into effect until today. An ounce of marijuana is now legal for adults over 21 in Washington. (Photo by Lindsey Wasson)
Photo: LINDSEY WASSON, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Professor Gizmo, 50, lights up as he waits for I-502 to take effect...

No matter how many "photo ops" of seized marijuana were staged in the "War on Drugs", only a small fraction of what was grown in the U.S. or brought into the country was ever seized.
Photo: Wall To Wall Media

No matter how many "photo ops" of seized marijuana were staged in...

Other Latin American countries?
Uruguay’s move comes as pressure grows across Latin America for a new approach to Washington’s ''war on drugs,'' which has ravaged the region, seeing hundreds of thousands die in drug-fuelled conflicts from Brazil’s favelas to Mexico’s troubled border cities.
Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has called for a discussion of the alternatives while his Guatemalan counterpart Otto Pérez Molina has openly advocated legalisation. Meanwhile, Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, has also called for a look at ''market'' solutions to the drug trade.
Photo: Mexican soldiers burn marijuana plants found amid a field of blue agave - the plant used for tequila, Jalisco State, Mexico.
Photo: HECTOR GUERRERO, AFP/Getty Images

Other Latin American countries?
Uruguay’s move comes as pressure...

George Shultz: The former Bechtel executive and President Reagan’s long-serving Secretary of State used a Wall Street Journal piece to argue: We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs. The establishment mandarin raised eyebrows, speaking at a luncheon before a Stanford-Notre Dame football game, when he called for legalization of marijuana.
(Photo By Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

George Shultz: The former Bechtel executive and President...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada has strongly opposed any effort to decriminalize marijuana. But even Harper is now talking about ticketing rather than arresting pot users. Opposition Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau has made headlines with two British Columbia speeches saying that he wants the forbidden weed legalized, taxed and regulated.
The Liberals are running ahead of Harper’s scandal-hobbled Conservative Party in national polls.
''I’m actually not in favor of decriminalizing cannabis, I’m in favor of legalizing it,'' Trudeau, a member of parliament from Quebec, told a rally in Kelowna.
Photo: Donald Weber, Getty Images

Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada has strongly opposed any...

A key moment in starting to end the failed "War on Drugs." From left Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, Mark Johnson, past president of the Washington State Bar Association, Dr. Robert W. Wood and travel writer and television host Rick Seves speak at a press conference after the group New Approach Washington filed an initiative to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Washington State on Wednesday, June 22, 2011.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO